Britain has rejected Russian accusations that the Royal Navy was responsible for explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Baltic Sea gas pipelines.
"To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale," the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) tweeted on Saturday.
"This invented story says more about arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the West," the ministry said.
The Russian Defence Ministry accused British forces earlier of directing the Ukrainian military in Saturday morning's drone attacks on the Russian Black Sea Fleet located off of the coastal city of Sevastapol in the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.
"Representatives of the same unit of the British navy were involved in the planning, preparation and execution of the Baltic Sea terrorist attack intended to blow up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines," the Russian ministry said.
"It's a straight lie and we all know the Russians did it," former Royal Navy admiral Chris Parry told Sky News on Saturday. "Russian propaganda right now always accuses everybody else of doing what they, in fact, have done."
"There's no capability for the Royal Navy or anybody in the UK offshore industry to be able to blow up those pipelines," Parry said.
In late September, following explosions near the Baltic island of Bornholm, four leaks were discovered in the pipelines, each of which run as dual streams between Russia and the north-eastern German town of Lubmin.
The EU and NATO, among others, suspect sabotage.
